As well known, the Internet is a massive network of networks in which computers communicate with each other via use of different communication protocols. The World Wide Web (a.k.a., the web) is a way of accessing information over the internet. Thus, in one sense, the web is one of many different types of information-sharing models built on top of the internet.
A specific type of architecture for communicating over the web is a client-server model. In general, a client in the client-server model is a computer (on the web) in which a browser application (such as Internet Explorer™ or Netscape™) runs. As its name suggests, a server in the client-server model is a computer that serves web documents or web pages over the internet to the client upon request. Based on use of the so-called browser, clients can specify which web pages to retrieve using hyperlinks. Hyperlinks are addresses to servers and, more particularly, web pages that contain graphics, sounds, text, video, other hyperlinks, etc.
One type of protocol for accessing information over the web in the client-server model discussed above is HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol). The HTTP protocol is one of multiple communication protocols supported by the Internet to allow applications to communicate and exchange information. Based on use of the web and, more particularly, use of the HTTP protocol over the web, a user at a client computer can retrieve information from a remote server (i.e., another computer) over the Internet via hyperlinks.
Use of the web is just one way to exploit the Internet. Other ways of disseminating information over the Internet (and not the web) include use of e-mail, which relies on SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol).
Needless to say, there has been an explosion regarding use of the Internet to share information. In addition to the explosion of the Internet, there has also been an explosion regarding use of cellular telephones. Today, cellular phones have become so advanced that so-called picture phones (e.g., cellular phones with display capability) can be used to take and send pictures to other cellular phones. Web sites currently exist to download images or multi-media messages (e.g., multi-media content encoded according to MMS or the Multimedia Messaging Service standard) to picture phones in a cellular network. Thus, using a browser at a client computer, a user on the web can select and download content such as images, text, sound, etc. to a cellular-based picture phone.